Chapter Text
Eddie’s vest is sort of destroyed, after everything. It’s coated in Steve’s (and demobat) blood, most of the pins are gone, and the whole right side seam is ripped open. The Dio backpatch has… Seen better days. Murray’s (Steve does listen to Eddie sometimes when he talks about his music, actually) poor face is split in two. Steve cringes a bit, holding the remains of the vest in his hands. The denim, which Steve knows used to be all nice and worn-in, soft against the skin, is now stiff from the dried blood. He doesn’t think it would wash out even if he knew how to properly wash it.
Eddie hasn’t really asked about it. He comes into Family Video at least three times a week, mostly to bother Robin at the front desk and follow Steve around the store. Steve likes it when Eddie’s there. Likes it when Eddie goes on and on about whatever movie he’s currently obsessed with. Rocky Horror. Labyrinth. Dune.
He moves his fingers over the frayed denim fabric. Gets an idea. Steve lays the vest flat on his bed, inspects it a bit closer. The silver pin with the W.A.S.P. acronym on it is still there. ”We Are Satan´s People”, he remembers people saying the acronym stood for. He doesn’t think that’s actually the case though, and thinks about how sweet Eddie is despite all the, uh, satanism allegations.
The Motörhead patch is also left. The rest have either fallen or been ripped off. He carefully takes off the W.A.S.P. pin, puts it by his lamp on his bedside table. The patch is still tightly stitched on, and he doesn’t want to rip it, so he leaves it. He tries to remember the other pins and patches. There was a pin with a horned face on it. A triangle patch with a red cross infinity symbol thing.
He walks over to his closet, looking for his own old denim jacket. It would probably be a bit big on Eddie, the other boy slightly lankier than him. Weirdly, something swells in his chest when he thinks about Eddie wearing his jacket. Eddie’s own vest looks like it used to be a jacket, with the sleeves having been cut off. Would Eddie want a new one to be the same?
Steve thinks he’ll need help creating a new vest. He knows next to nothing about battle vests, and is only vaguely familiar with what bands Eddie listens to. Metallica, of course. Megadeth. Black Sabbath. He thinks about the way Eddie had leaned into him, a real Ozzy move. His face turns a bit hot, remembering Eddie complimenting him in his own weird metal language.
Dont´cha, Big Boy. Robin teases Steve about that one on the regular. She says Eddie certainly doesn’t flirt with her the way he did, and does, with Steve. Steve doubts she would even notice if Eddie did, though.
When he finds the jacket, he takes it off the hanger and holds it up in front of him. It’s not as worn in as Eddie’s vest, still has some of that new denim stiffness. And it’s not totally ripped apart. Perfect.
---
”Hey dingus,” Robin greets him along with the doorbell when Steve comes into work the next day. She looks at the vest in his hands. Looks up at him.
”Didn’t know denim vests were a part of the Family Video dresscode.” Steve walks up to her, leans against the counter. Lays the vest in front of him, puts his elbows on it and props up his chin on his hands. He sighs.
”You have to help me with something,” he says, looking at her with his best puppy dog eyes. ”I want to make a new vest for Eddie. Seeing as the other is, uh, a bit destroyed.” Robin smirks at him. She raises an eyebrow.
”Oh, do you now?” She says, knowingly. Steve doesn’t really like the suggestion in her voice. He decides to ignore it.
”Yeah. I feel kinda guilty about it. First I stole it and then I got it absolutely ruined.” He looks down at the vest on the counter. ”I thought maybe I could make it up to him if I made him a new one.”
”That’s cute,” Robin says, ”but he did give it to you. Willingly. You didn’t, like, take it from him with force.” Steve smiles a bit at her.
”What was it he said?” She continues, ”for your modesty? Yeah, sure. He just couldn’t focus with your chest out.” She snorts.
”Ha ha,” Steve says flatly. ”Sure, yeah. He has the hots for me or whatever. You’ve made that very clear.” He thinks about Eddie giving him his vest in the Upside Down. Well, throwing it at him. Steve had been sitting with Nancy after getting like, a pound of his flesh stolen by demobats, and Eddie had given it to him without any prompting. Eddie had sounded like he was hiding being a bit irritated at him. Or maybe at Nancy, now that Steve thinks about it, Eddie had spent a lot of time in the Upside Down shooting her weird looks. And then he had, again unprompted, given Steve a whole speech about getting Nancy back. While staring a lot at him. Really close to his face. Steve shuts his eyes tight, remembering Eddie’s face close to his. Remembers noticing Eddie’s faint freckles.
Robin giggles a little, as if she’s reading his thoughts. She takes the vest from under Steve’s elbows and holds it up in front of her, inspecting it. Turns it around and makes a face at the state of the backpatch. Steve mirrors her expression.
”You’re going to need help from someone who can actually sew dude. And that is not me,” she says, putting the vest back down. Steve sighs. He didn’t exactly expect Robin to be a seamstress, what with her hand-eye coordination being about that of a small child, but he doesn’t really have anyone else to ask for help. The only person he knows could make a good vest for Eddie is, well, Eddie, and that won´t work for... Obvious reasons.
”Ugh.” He lets his head fall to the counter. Stretches his arms out in front of him, touching Robin´s where she stands at the other side. She puts a hand on the back of his head, rubs his hair a bit.
”I’m sure you can figure it out. You’re not a complete idiot,” she says softly, comforting him.
”Yeah, contrary to popular belief. But I’ve never sewn anything. Like, ever.”
”Dude, if forty year old men can sew on a few patches on their vests then so can you.” Steve looks up at her through his fringe. She smiles reassuringly.
---
Steve can’t help but bother her about the vest all throughout their shift. Robin gets a bit irritated, snapping at him that ”he doesn’t even need to make a vest to get results”, whatever that means.
As they walk out to Steve’s car once the shift ends, she’s slightly more sympathetic to Steve’s wallowing. She’s carrying the vest carefully over one arm.
”Steve, stop sulking. I’m sure you’ll be able to make at least a half-decent vest.” She opens the passenger side door and looks at him over the roof of the car.
”I sure hope so. I’m hoping the backpatch can be sewn together again, I have no clue where I’d find something like that,” Steve says. Maybe there’s stores for this kind of stuff in Indianapolis, Steve wonders, because there sure aren’t any in Hawkins. Steve’s pretty sure someone would start a town-wide protest if anyone started selling metal stuff here, especially after… everything.
”Maybe Jonathan knows? He’s a music nerd, right?” Robin suggests, taking her seat and placing Eddie’s vest in her lap. She smooths it over with her hands, seemingly not caring about touching Steve’s dried blood.
”Yeah, I guess so. I’ll ask him next time I see him. Do you think he’s coming to DnD night anytime soon?” Steve has taken to dropping off and picking up the kids at Nancy and Mike’s for DnD every week, sometimes staying to watch. He likes watching everyone play, likes having everyone in the same place. And Eddie always gets so into it. He’s theatrical, putting on voices for all of his characters, dramatically acting out scenes. It’s difficult for Steve to not spend the entire time watching him. Last week Eddie put a tape in the Wheelers´ cassette deck and loudly sang that the dungeons are calling, raising his fist as if holding a microphone. Eddie always closes his eyes when he sings, like he´s concentrating.
”Maybe. You could ask Nancy to bring him.” Steve grimaces. Things have been pretty awkward between him and Nancy lately, ever since his whole six kids, marriage, domestic dream speech. He kind of regrets ever telling her. He realized it while he was saying it, how all of it was the complete opposite of Nancy. She’s independent, not the type to be happy being a, well, housewife. Not the type to want a whole football team´s worth of kids.
”Or you could?” He asks Robin, turning to look at her while he puts the car in reverse. Robin looks at him understandingly and nods.
”Sure,” she says, ”I’ll come with you to DnD night on Friday and ask her.” Steve relaxes a bit. He never has to over-explain himself to Robin. Explain anything at all, really, she just understands him. Sometimes he thinks Robin is his soulmate. A platonic one. With a capital P.
Robin puts a cassette in the radio and starts harmonizing with Cyndi. "If you're lost, you can look, and you will find me". Steve smiles and backs out of the parking lot.
---
Eddie comes into Family Video the next day. He does a dramatic bow at the door with one hand on the doorknob, earning him a snort from Robin. He looks up and grins widely. Steve looks at his thin smile lines. Eddie always smiles with his whole face, pearly teeth and crinkles at the outer corners of his eyes. And he smiles a lot. He smiles when he talks about his music, when he jokes around with Steve, when he bothers Robin, practically the whole time during DnD sessions. It´s blinding, sometimes.
”What are my dear friends up to today?” Eddie clasps his hands behind his back and takes large steps over to Steve and Robin. He puts his hands on the counter, nails painted with black nailpolish. They´re chipped. He absentmindedly strokes his fingers over one of his rings.
”Oh you know. The usual. Waiting for the rush of people wanting to rent a movie on a Tuesday.” Steve follows the movement of Eddies fingers with his eyes. Focuses in on the silver skull ring on his index finger. It’s a thick band, a skull with surrounding roses. It’s pretty, in a metal sort of way.
"Guess this isn´t your most busy day, huh?" Eddie says. Steve looks up at him and shakes his head slightly.
"It´s so boring, dude. We just stand around all day. I think I´ve reorganized the horror aisle like, fifty times."
"Pfft. Steve´s just bored because there´s no babes coming in here in the middle of the week." Robin rolls her eyes. "Not that he has any luck with them anyway." Steve holds a hand over his chest, drags in a loud, dramatic breath. Fakes taking offense at her statement.
”Is that so? What, that Harrington charm not working like it used to?” Eddie looks at Steve, leans forward over the counter towards him. He clasps his hands together into a fist, holds them up underneath his chin and flutters his eyelashes at Steve. Steve tries to force the butterflies in his stomach to stop flying around. They don´t listen.
”Could’ve sworn it worked on certain people in the Upside Down,” Robin chimes in, putting the back of her hand against her mouth to hide a grin. Steve frowns. It most certainly didn’t work. He royally screwed up with Nancy. Sure, things were going good for the most part, but then he had to go screw it up when they stole that van. He doesn’t even really know why he tried anything. His feelings for Nancy aren’t romantic anymore, haven’t been for a while. He guesses the stress from all the Vecna shit just made things confusing.
He gets sort of lost in his thoughts but then hears a loud, squeaky ow from Robin, looks over at her and sees Eddie flicking her hand with his fingers, shushing her dramatically. Robin has an amused expression on her face. She backs away from Eddie with her arms up in defeat. Steve´s confused.
---
Steve, Robin, Dustin, Will and Lucas get to the Wheelers´ house a bit early that Friday, and while the boys go down to the basement to discuss the campaign, Steve whispers to Robin to talk to Nancy for him. She goes upstairs and knocks on her door, and Steve stands awkwardly at the base of the stairs, but thinks he shouldn´t eavesdrop. Yeah, no, nevermind. He is absolutely eavesdropping.
”Couldn’t Steve ask me himself?” He hears Nancy asking Robin, her voice a bit irritated. Robin makes up an excuse, saying Steve wouldn’t understand her advice and she has to act as an interpreter. It’s a dumb excuse and Steve knows Nancy doesn’t believe it for a second. Maybe he and Robin should have made a game plan.
”Whatever. Sure, I can give some advice for you to ”interpret”. He should use a whip stitch, and make sure to pin down the patches before stitching them on. For the backpatch, he should use a sewing machine. I highly doubt he has one though. If he asks for my help on his own I might decide to help him with it,” Nancy says, and Steve cringes inwardly. He doesn’t really want to listen anymore, so he goes downstairs after the boys. They´re already bickering. Max and Eleven are sitting in El´s old blanket fort, reading Wonder Woman. Steve sort of just stands in the middle of the room, waiting for Robin.
Robin comes down shortly after him, giving him two thumbs up and smiling.
”Nancy says she’ll ask Jonathan about stores on the phone later. And that she’ll help you with the backpatch if you ask her yourself. And that you should pin the patches down. And that you should use whip stitches. And-” Steve interrupts her.
”Robin. Robin. You’re talking to me. I have no idea what a whip stitch is,” he says.
”Oh. Right. Uh. I don’t really know either. Guess you’ll have to figure it out.” He groans and puts his head in his hands. Threads his fingertips through his hair.
”Trouble in paradise?” Steve looks through his fingers and sees Eddie standing at the top of the stairs. He’s wearing a loose-fitting tank top, with a V for Van Halen (Steve actually knows one Van Halen song, thank you very much) on it. One of his tattoos is visible below his right collarbone. It’s the very ends of a couple lightning bolts. Steve wants to see all of it. As Eddie walks down, he finds himself staring, wondering if the tattoo continues far down his chest. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Robin looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
”Oh, you know. Just Steve being overdramatic as usual,” she says, and Eddie lets out a quiet giggle. He walks up to Steve and waves his hand in front of his face.
”Hello? My eyes are up here, Stevie,” he says with a smirk. Steve practically rips his eyes away from Eddie’s chest, embarrassed.
”What? Oh, sorry,” he says, feeling the warmth in his cheeks. Eddie looks at him intently, as if studying him. Steve kind of wants to fall through the floor. Wonders if he can if he concentrates enough. Maybe he could ask El to banish him to the Upside Down. Eddie smiles a bit, looks as if he´s just figured something out.
”I´ll show it to you sometime.” Eddie leans forward, stands on his toes, despite not really needing to, and whispers in Steve’s ear. Steve feels a shiver going down his back. He looks at Eddie with wide eyes, and Eddie´s smirking and giving him a small wave with his fingers while he walks past him toward the table in the middle of the room. Robin lets out a surprised laugh. Steve kicks her shin.
---
Eddie puts on a dramatic, low voice when they start the session. His eyes get dark and serious, the shadows from his bangs falling over them, making him look like he’s telling a ghost story around a campfire with a flashlight held under his chin. His eyelashes are really long, Steve thinks. He and Robin sit on the couch on the left side of the table, watching them play.
”Before you stands a huge stone structure. There’s a large entrance in front of you, and a smaller gate to your left. The outside of the large prison dungeons you’ve arrived at is littered with old barrels and wooden crates. By the left gate lies a dead, partly decomposed horse, still attached to the wagon behind it. You can hear distant barking. The crates and barrels look to be easy to open. What will you do?”
”I’ll check the dead horse,” Mike says, making the first move.
”You check on the dead horse. It looks to have been dead for about a week. There are maggots crawling around its eyes and mouth, and there is a large chunk of its side missing.” Eddie fake-pukes.
”I wanna open some barrels.” Lucas turns over a dice in his hands over and over. ”There’s probably some loot.”
”You lift the lids of a couple of the barrels. You find a cabbage, a blue vial you don’t know the function of, and some dirt.”
"Dirt? Are you serious?" Lucas protests. Eddie makes a tssk sound with his tongue.
Dustin gets a wooden shield from one of the crates, and Will investigates the left-side stairway. Steve doesn´t really know how DnD works, but he knows it uses dice. Eddie hasn´t asked them to roll the dice yet. It´s as if he´s building up to something, saving the dice rolls for a special moment.
”The barking is getting closer. The hounds sound almost rabid. Despite the seemingly never-ending darkness, you descend down the left-hand stairway into the dungeon. The stairs are uneven and covered with moss. At the bottom, you find an open door to the right which leads you into a large room. As you walk in, you notice a large ritual circle of some sort on the floor. It looks to be drawn in blood.”
”Dude,” Lucas whispers. They all look intently at Eddie.
”Lets check it out,” Mike says, I wanna know if Will can tell what it is.” Will is their mage, Steve has heard them say, and knows that is magic-related in some way.
”Will the Wise looks closer at the ritual circle. It´s old, carved into the stone floor, but the blood is fairly new. It looks to belong to an old religion, one that none of you are familiar with. It doesn´t tell you anything.” Eddie narrates. He leans back in his chair, stretches his arms and folds them behind his neck.
”Well, that was underwhelming. Lets just continue forward,” Dustin sighs. The rest of the boys agree. Eddie smirks, mischievously.
"Roll for luck." He giggles a little, and then gets back into character. "You´ll need it."
Mike takes one of the dice, a D20, Steve thinks it´s called. He rolls it. The die takes ages to stop, but when it does, it lands on a five. Steve thinks that´s bad. It probably is, because then Eddie laughs evilly.
”You take a couple steps over the ritual circle. The floor on the other side suddenly starts to pull you in, turning into something not unlike quicksand. You fall through the floor, finding yourself in a strange, empty corridor. Your ankles hurt slightly from the fall. Your voices echo against the walls. As you all stand up and catch your breaths, a black figure appears, floating in the air in front of you. She flies around you in a circle once. Her arms are long, ending in pointy, long fingernails. One of them holds a knife with a curved blade. Her mouth is open, showing two rows of spiky teeth, and her eyes look completely empty.” The boys groan in unison, and Eddie grins.
---
When he gets home that night, Steve looks over the vest again. The stitches around the backpatch are sort of loose, and he thinks he could remove them even without a proper stitch ripper. He gets a scissor from the kitchen and holds one side of it like a small knife, slides it under one of the stitches and rips through it easily. He holds down the edge of the backpatch to make sure he doesn’t rip the fabric as well. He continues on with the next stitch, and the next.
Soon all the stitches are removed and he can take the patch off of the vest. He folds both halves of it and puts it on his nightstand. He makes quick work of the Motörhead patch as well, putting it in the same spot. The W.A.S.P. pin is already laying by the lamp. There. Now the vest is completely empty, and Steve thinks it looks weird. Unnerving, almost. It’s like it’s naked.
The phone rings suddenly. Steve nearly jumps. People don’t really call his house. The ones who used to were always looking for his parents, and they stopped after he had to tell them his parents were somewhere else one too many times. He stands up, takes the stairs two steps at a time, and picks up the phone on the wall in the kitchen.
”Harrington residence?” He answers, half-expecting it to be someone looking for his parents yet again.
”Really? That’s how you answer the phone? Harrington residence?” Eddie laughs on the line. Steve’s heart, weirdly, skips a beat. He chalks it up to surprise. Eddie´s never called before. The only time he´s spoken to Eddie like this has been through Dustin´s walkie-talkie.
”Hi,” he says, turning around to lean his back against the wall, ”and yeah. People don’t really call the Harrington residence looking for little old me.” He looks down at his feet. Didn´t really intend for it to sound so pathetic.
”I did,” Eddie responds, and he sounds so sincere that Steve has to close his eyes for a second. He lets his head fall back against the wall.
”You did,” he replies. The line goes quiet for a few seconds. Steve taps his fingers against the wall behind him nervously. Chews on his lips. Doesn’t really know what to say next.
”So. Uh. Are you doing anything right now?” Eddie asks just as the silence starts to turn awkward.
”Yeah, I´m… I’m working on a project,” Steve says, ”for a friend.” He´s miserably bad at lying, and he knows it. He hopes Eddie won´t be able to tell. Maybe it´ll be more difficult to pick up on over the phone.
”Oh, are you? What is it? Is it for a special friend?” Eddie says, and Steve can hear in his voice that he’s smirking. He scoffs. Rolls his eyes, shakes his head, and then realizes Eddie can´t see him.
”Yeah, because I have so many of those currently,” he deadpans, ”Nah man. A regular friend.” The word ”regular” feels wrong in his mouth. It´s dry, dusty. Like sand. Like he has to force it out. ”And you can’t know what it is.”
”What? You keeping secrets from me, Harrington? You’re wounding me, dude.” Eddie fakes a little sniffle into the phone. Steve laughs.
”You’d gossip,” he says. Actually, Eddie probably wouldn´t, but he doesn´t really have any better excuse for not telling him. He´s just as bad as Robin as coming up with good excuses, he realizes.
”What? I would never!” Eddie protests, and Steve can practically see him slapping a hand to his chest, making a fake-hurt face. Then the line goes quiet again. Steve chews his lips again. He hears Eddie drawing in a quick, kind of shaky breath.
”Anyway. I was wondering if you wanted to smoke with me, actually. I’m kinda lonely. Going stir-crazy. And regular crazy.” Eddie almost sounds shy, voice a bit quieter than before. "I don´t really know anyone else who I could ask." Steve sighs.
”Can’t today man. I start early tomorrow.”
”Oh, right.” Eddie sounds a bit disappointed. Steve regrets sighing. Maybe Eddie thinks he finds him annoying? He doesn´t want him to think that. It couldn´t be further from the truth. And he´s about to tell him so when he hears Eddie´s voice again.
”Are uh… Are you available any other day? Because I’m not kidding dude, smoking alone in this fucking apartment creeps me out. I just wanna be around someone else, you know? And I thought, hey, Steve´s a nice person. Steve´s my friend. Steve´s smoked before. He´d probably be up for it.” Steve’s cheeks feel a bit warm. He wonders if he’s getting a fever or something. He thinks it over, looks up at the ceiling, counts the days on his hands. Tries to visualize his schedule.
”Sure. I can keep you from going insane on Monday,” he promises after some thinking, ”do you want to come smoke here? My parents aren´t home anyway. Mi casa es tu casa, or whatever it is people say.” He feels stupid right after saying it. Slaps a hand over his face. God. He didn´t even take Spanish in school. Hopefully Eddie doesn´t think he sounds too dorky.
”You having me over? At the famed Harrington residence? Why, Stevie, you’ve got me twirling the phone cord around my finger here,” Eddie giggles, and Steve has to close his eyes again at the sound of it. He smiles.
”It’s a date.”